Fostering Relationships in a Pandemic

Brydie Smith Beyond the Classroom, Community No Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges for us over the last 10 months, with one of the most significant challenges being our limited social interactions and lost time with loved ones. This has had a ripple effect into our school, with students not being able to fully embrace the social components of being in the classroom. As a school, we try to support all aspects of student wellbeing, including their social health, which is why we have taken the extra step to create some (safe) opportunities to socialize!

Before the winter break, our Student Life Counsellor, Jamie, and our Educational Assistant, Brydie, played a friendly – socially distanced and masked – game of Basketball with two of our highschoolers. There was a lot at stake; the losers had to bake for the winners. Needless to say, Jamie and Brydie spent the following weekend baking! Unfortunately the stay-at-home order meant that they couldn’t plan anymore basketball games in the foreseeable future…but it gives them a chance to practice for the next one!

Since moving online after the break, our Middle Schoolers have expressed their struggles with the switching back to virtual learning, after being on-site and in-person since September 2020. Acknowledging this drastic switch and second loss of social interaction, we started a weekly after school “Hangout” where the Middle School students can have some supervised non-academic fun! Our first week was spent creating communal rules to ensure a safe space, then starting our comic books by designing our avatars and making a 3-page comic on what we would be doing if we had unlimited freedom! Our participants didn’t hesitate to get creative, become the President of the United States, and soar into space!

With the end of Octo 4 fast approaching and the extended remote learning announcement, we look forward to having something fun planned for the High Schoolers to interact with one another soon… watch this space!

Cooking Comfort Foods

Katie Clay Beyond the Classroom, Community, Healthy Living No Comments


With winter upon us and another lockdown in place Cooking Club has been making some warm and comforting meals to get us through!

Last week everyone made their version of fried rice. We discussed some key tips to making delicious fried rice including using leftover rice, sesame oil, and fresh ginger. Once again, there was a wide variety in the ingredients that students chose, including chicken, tofu, beef, shrimp, egg and lots of different veggies. The end results were even better than the take out versions.

This past week we made a fan favourite – macaroni and cheese. Impressively everyone made their mac n cheese from scratch, no KD in sight. We discussed how to make a roux for the base of the sauce and shared what kind of cheeses we were including. Some students chose to make a different kind of pasta dish to suit their needs, leaving everyone satisfied.

With just a couple sessions left for the year the club plans to make Potato Latkes next week ahead of Chanukah and then finish off 2020 (finally!) with some holiday baking.

The Y-Fi: Creating a Digital Student Magazine in Magazine Club

Katie Freeland Community, English and Humanities No Comments

Y-Fi Magazine

This year in the magazine club, a group of students has been working to publish a quarterly magazine for their YMCA Academy peers. In creating the first issue of The Y-Fi Magazine, available to the student body next week, the group has learned a lot about collaborating with each other: sharing ideas, making decisions together, giving feedback, and sometimes compromising.

The magazine includes all sorts of sections: puzzles, birthdays (of those who’ve opted to have them shared), seasonal recipes, music, movies, opinions, and more. Each section has a different editor, but students have also been eager to help each other out and offer encouragement. Many of the skills students are making use of, from writing and editing to design and digital literacy, have been developed in different courses, and it has been wonderful to see them apply these outside of class.

The process of creating a first issue has taken some time, but the learning opportunities have been many along the way. We had initially started out working with Canva, which would give us both a print edition and an online version of the magazine. However, with the move to fully virtual extracurriculars, we ran into a few challenges with this platform. Specifically, students wanted to be able to edit simultaneously without accidentally losing anyone’s contributions. With this in mind, we settled on Google Sites, as this free tool checked off all the boxes students felt they needed in order to work together successfully, and to create something that would appeal to their peers. For now, the magazine consists of text and visuals, but future issues will likely include video and audio content as well.

Finally, active Magazine Club members aren’t the only ones whose voices can come through in The Y-Fi Magazine — all Academy students can submit their ideas, artwork, letters, or feedback, and new contributors are always welcome.

What has Cooking Club Been Up To?

Katie Clay Community, Experiential Learning No Comments


Cooking Club continues to meet weekly and has been putting together some new and healthy recipes. In the days leading up to each session students are told what type of food they will be preparing and given some ideas and recipes. Some choose from the provided recipes, but many research their own or use a family favourite.

A few weeks ago we made soup and we had everything from chicken noodle to pea soup to carrot/sweet potato to tomato and more! This past week we made veggies and dip, which was a good opportunity for students to practice their knife skills and slice vegetables into uniform sticks. They also practiced their presentation skills to create pleasing veggie platters. Again we had a variety of recipes from hummus to thousand island to roasted cauliflower to cheese dip, and even spinach dip in a bread bowl!

Last week, we did things a little differently and one of our students chose the recipe for everyone to follow. He had suggested we make Korean Vegetable Pancakes, which was something most students had never even tasted before, so it seemed like a great idea. Students learned about this popular dish and worked to create savoury pancakes with a slightly chewy, yet crispy texture. It was fun to experiment with something different and try new foods!

Halloween: Pumpkin Carving

Rein Tammemagi Community, Experiential Learning, Healthy Living No Comments


For the spirit of fall and Halloween, Reinman’s green industries class ventured to Loblaws to buy pumpkins to carve, but as we learnt whilst in the course we have to be prepared for the unexpected. They were out of pumpkins! So in replacement we all got different sorts of squashes, gourds, and pink pumpkins. A few students even got kombucha (a healthy kind of soda!) another important lesson we learnt that day was to always check the receipt to make sure they charge you correctly and that they add the sale prices.

As we returned to school we had to make some changes to the carvings so they could fit on the various vegetables.

Than the final step began. The carving. We went on the terrace and carved some spooky, creative designs! Overall it was a fun day with many lessons along the way.

Student blog by: Krys M